Remember: all compassion is cold-hearted labor strategy.

I’m really really tired of brain stuff dominating the football news but there’s no good reason for it to stop: one of the ideals a modern society is that we don’t approve of people knowingly killing themselves as a form of entertainment. That doesn’t mean it should be the only item discussed. So allow your fearless correspondent to the country of Depraved and Addled-Minded Conspiracies put in his two bits:

As previously documented, the NFL has had full knowledge of the way their product was bashing brains, and yet up to this point they’ve remained relatively inactive. So what’s managed to goad the boss-men to action? We can toss out any sort of compassion or human emotion as a reasonable explanation– these guys have employed some of the most morally vacant athletes in history and failed to bat an eye. No, these men, like most, only have compassion for their bank statements and their power.

So if we turn to those things we find a very convenient reason for the sudden action of the NFL: the upcoming CBA. While the fatuous majority have bought the idea that labor unions and labor strikes are un-American, the few times where labor has had success against management is when they are able to show horrendous work conditions. For our first 150 years as a nation, kids worked our most vile and violent jobs and the calls for reform were rare. It was only at the turn of the century with the advent of photography and faster communication that the public decided that 5 year olds in coal mines and mangled 10 year olds weren’t The American Way. It seems that Joe Q. Freedom has very little sympathy with wage issues but can pour it on for physical safety.

So the exploiters over in Goodell’s camp, who up to this point felt confident that their position was strong for the Upcoming Ruckus, rightly see this as a serious threat to their plans. They’ve always had the successful move of Pointing Out The Players Are Super Rich (ignoring their own super-super-richness). But there’s something unspoken in the American ethic that says that only a certain level of violence is acceptable in the workplace and from-the-neck paralysis and early death go beyond those levels. Owners’ Main Argumentative Card? Gone.

And with the lockout screaming towards us faster than most feel comfortable admitting, the owners’ are trying to get back on the Moral High Horse by acting tough, even against the players’ wishes. Don’t worry, the outraged first responses of Rodney Harrison, Steve Young, and Matt Millen will be duly smoothed down by the league and its corporate toadies in Bristol and at 30 Rock. Soon they’ll be spewing that the penalties are necessary for the players’ own good and that this is keeping with the league’s history of moral rectitude. I say to hell with that, to hell with letting the owners regain any of the moral righteousness that they stole in the first place. They’re cretins, never forget this. Dave got it right when he said that these acts of violence weren’t just tolerated by the owners, they were celebrated. The owners are trying to pull a quick one, yet again, and tell us that this isn’t The Pride Of The League that they’ve been selling to us, it’s a National Scourge that needs to be eradicated. Don’t let them.